wwp@yahoogroups.com:
Re: 6 feet overhead
Roger Howard 2006-May-02 18:38:00
On May 2, 2006, at 11:30 AM, Landis Bennett wrote:
>>> On 02/05/2006, at 7:21 AM, Roger Howard wrote:
>>>> thousands of people gathered closely in one area is always a
>>>> good subject for photography, and being able to loft a pano rig
>>>> about 6 feet overhead makes for a great view!
>>>
>>> ... and I'd love to see a picture of that (you and your lofted rig
>>> at work in the crowd) too! Make an interesting side-note to the
>>> lengths we sometimes go to to get that panoramic image viewpoint.
>>
>> Ok, the panos are all batching right now.. until then, here's a
>> partial pano for you, from about 12 feet above the street:
>>
>> http://www.rogerroger.org/image/563
>
>
> Not quite at the same level (either skill or altitude) but I just did
> my first over the head monopod shot over this past weekend. It
> actually worked out a bit better than expected. Still have some
> issues to address, but I'm on my way. Next time I'll make sure
> someone gets a photo of me doing it.
Great pano!
I've really been blown away how easy this all has gotten... I never
expected to get such good results with a monopod and simple rig like
I'm using now. I just bought a 360P used, but I'm wondering if I'll
ever bother to use it! Not to harp on things too much, but none of
this would be possible for me without PTGUI - I'm as big a Mac OSX
guy as there are, but I've done enough comparisons to know that PTGUI
is the single most important piece of my workflow nowadays, and
easily warrants me using a PC even if its the only app I run on
Windows! I await the day that PTMac catches up, or that I can run
PTGUI on my Mac... but until one of those comes to pass I'm happy to
use my PC (even if my girlfriend swears at me everytime I fire it
up!). Seriously though, nothing can come close - the results I get,
even from very imperfect shots like a monopod swaying in the wind
overhead, are so easily stitched it makes me cry thinking of all the
time I wasted on other apps in the past.
The only rough part is the old PC I'm using is no speed demon (about
4 years old, only 512MB, etc), so the processing itself takes a
while... but that all happens in the background while I'm asleep or
at work!
Will have 23 spherical panos up tonight, including some interesting
ones inspired by the work of Erik and Hans - instead of holding the
monopod vertically, I extended it at about a 40 degree angle over the
crowd, to get panoramas floating above groups of people I was 10 feet
from! It was surprisingly easy to straighten these out to look just
right!
Cheers -R